Guilty verdict on Suu Kyi upheld in Burmese court

A COURT in Burma has upheld its guilty verdict against opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in a ruling that comes as no surprise but dashes hopes that the Nobel laureate would be free in time for next year’s elections.

The military government says the elections will be open, but there are widespread suspicions that the generals will keep a tight rein on power.

Ms Suu Kyi (64) has been confined in her house for about 14 of the past 20 years, because the military dictatorship that runs Burma sees her as a threat, she is popular among the Burmese people and has a high profile in the international community. Hundreds of other human rights defenders are also imprisoned in Burma.

Burma is a former British colony that has been ruled by a military junta since 1962, with brutal crackdowns on anti-junta protests in 1988 and 2007.

Ms Suu Kyi was found guilty in August of breaking a law protecting the state from “subversive elements” when she allowed an American intruder to stay at her home for two nights, while she was under house arrest.

The verdict was widely condemned internationally and seen as a ploy to keep Ms Suu Kyi out of next year’s elections. They are the first since 1990, when her National League for Democracy (NLD) party scored a landslide victory that the ruling junta refused to recognise. The decision not to recognise the results prompted the EU and the US to impose sanctions.

In August, a court at Rangoon’s notorious Insein prison sentenced Ms Suu Kyi, who is reportedly frail, to three years hard labour, but junta chief Than Shwe reduced that to 18 months under house arrest.

John Yettaw, the eccentric American who triggered the debacle by swimming to Ms Suu Kyi’s lakeside mansion in May, was sentenced to seven years hard labour in August, but the regime freed him following a visit by US senator Jim Webb.

The basis of the appeal against Ms Suu Kyi’s sentence was that her 18-month sentence over the security breach was unlawful because it was based on legislation no longer in use.

While she talks of running in the forthcoming polls, she would be prevented from running for office because of her marriage to a foreigner, the late British academic Michael Aris.

Since the detention of Ms Suu Kyi, the international community has done much to isolate the Burmese junta and imposed a raft of crippling sanctions, although some countries, including China and India, have dealt with the junta over oil and gas rights.